The Darkest Sin

by Caroline Richards

  Rowena’s words cut through the inconvenient reverie like a knife through butter, drowning out the cadences of Kate’s singular intonations. “I shan’t take much of your time,” she promised, her spectacular eyes summoning him.

  Rushford forced himself back to the present. “So you say,” he replied, his voice miraculously even. “And yet you forced your way into my home to do what precisely?”

  Rowena took a deep breath, stilling her hands, the slender fingers both elegant and capable, not at all pink, plump, or ladylike. “I come to seek your expertise,” she declared, as though it was obvious, and for a wretched moment he thought he had misheard. He was bloody expert at very little these days, as it turned out. “Your expertise as a detective of crime,” she elaborated. “I have heard and read of your exploits.”

  The back of his neck tightened. Of course, the Cruikshank murders. Had he known the uproar the case would engender, he would never have taken it on, goddamn the broadsheets. Galveston’s supercilious gaze came all too readily to mind. So that was what Rowena Woolcott was after, his help. Now wasn’t that rich? Like asking the devil for guidance. “Go on,” he said, not liking himself much at the moment.

  Gazing upon Rowena Woolcott, he wondered whether she realized how beautiful she was, the effect she could have upon men, if she chose, with the elegance of her profile, those dark blue eyes, slanted at the corners and that mouth, stained like the ripe raspberries of summer. Rushford was the last man on earth who heard poetry in his soul, but experience had taught him a stinging lesson about the siren call of desire. One more complicating factor, he realized, when it came to the fate of Rowena Woolcott.

  She was watching him, calibrating his response, as any young woman would, trapped as she was alone in a man’s bedchamber late at night. “I read about the Cruikshank murders,” she said. “How you spent days and weeks collecting evidence and hunting down the felon,” she continued in a low whisper, as though recounting tales of knightly deeds. “Those poor women about whom no one cared, other than you, sir.”

  Rushford scrubbed a hand down his face, groaning inwardly, the burn of stubble against his palm somehow welcome. “Is that what you believe, Miss? Madam? Forgive me, but I don’t even know your name.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. For now.”

  “Ah yes. More mystery.” A deadly joke, of which only he was aware.

  “But I know you can help me.” There was a stubbornness in her tone. “As you helped them.”

  “Flattery doesn’t go nearly as far as one might wish. I am not the helpful sort, believe me.” If the past three years didn’t prove that point, nothing would. Ridding himself of Rowena Woolcott would be in her best interests, although she might not appreciate the fact at the moment. It dawned upon him then how simple it could be to be done with her. To frighten her. Drive her off. It was mere coincidence, as opposed to fate or poetic justice, that had delivered her once more into his hands. Thank God. “May I pour you a brandy before I see you on your way?” he asked with no solicitousness in his voice.

  Rowena’s head jerked up, causing a thick strand of hair, the color of deep burgundy, to fall loose from her chignon over one shoulder. “But I haven’t explained. Everything.”

  Rushford moved over to the bedside table and poured a healthy measure of brandy into a heavy lead crystal glass. “No need.” He picked up the drink and strode directly opposite her. A faint scent of soap and something else, achingly familiar, slammed his senses. He shut down the memories, thrusting the glass into her slender hand. Challenging himself to touch her, to see if he dared, he closed her cold fingers around the glass. “I don’t need to hear details. Because I am not for hire, madam.”

  “But I have money,” she persisted. “Not much but some.” Her fingers tightened momentarily around his, and to his surprise, she raised the glass to her lips and took a sip, closing her eyes as the warmth slipped down her slender throat. Send her on her way. The words pulsed in his brain. As he should have done that first time.

  “I cannot help you,” he said simply. Decisively. Any other woman might have implored, begged, or wept, but Rowena Woolcott stared at him with a tensile strength that would have shaken a lesser man.

  Her hand on his arm was surprisingly strong, the fingers long and elegant and he’d wager, accustomed to handling a horse’s reins with ease. There was a wildness about Rowena Woolcott, he noted not for the first time, a willfulness that refused constraints. She had scaled his town house, broken into his bedchamber, confronted him—he stopped the flow of thoughts, the cool of her hand penetrating the sleeve of his shirt. Most of all, Rowena Woolcott had survived—as though he could ever forget.

  She removed her hand, taking a few steps away from him, needing the safety of distance to collect her thoughts, to marshal her argument. “At least allow me to tell you of the circumstances—of my circumstances,” she amended, getting the facts out brusquely. “This is all about two sisters and their aunt. And a man who wants them to suffer in the worst possible way.”

  Rushford made his face granite. “Not my problem, alas. I am not a detective, as you seem to believe. The Cruikshank situation was entirely anomalous. I simply had a surfeit of time on my hands. As for your own circumstances, surely a difficult guardian is not unusual.”

  “He is not a guardian. You don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps I do not wish to.”

  She took a step closer to him, careless in her courage, the dull dun color of her cloak unable to subdue the subtle radiance of her skin. “But you must,” she said, all but stamping her foot. “I was abducted from my home and then left to drown. I don’t recall many details, because my memory has somehow been impaired, but I know for certain that someone wishes to do away with me and those I care for the most.”

  Rushford feigned skepticism. “Murder? I believe we’re being a trifle melodramatic here.” Of course, her memory would be impaired, given the amount of opiates she had been given. He steeled himself. Rowena Woolcott really left him little choice, but his eyes still searched hers for a glimmer of recognition. He found none. “Still not interested, madam, miss, or whoever you are,” he said. “I am not the shining knight in armor or the clever detective whom you seek. You have the wrong man, someone who has entirely no interest in seeking to punish evildoers, in righting old wrongs, or however you choose to frame the situation in your no-doubt overheated imagination. Now I will ask you politely to leave.”

  “And if I refuse?” she asked with a graceful shrug of her shoulders.

  Christ, she was young and foolish, he thought for the second time that night. He was tired, unaccountably irritated and determined to rid himself of Rowena Woolcott once and for all. Though overt vulgarity was not in his repertoire, it was the only recourse that readily came to mind. He closed the distance between them and removed the glass of brandy from her hand. “I shall not invite you to leave twice,” he said distinctly. “Instead, I may have to act upon my baser instincts, for which few could fault me, given the presence of an uninvited, albeit comely, female in my rooms. Do I make myself understood?”

  For once she was speechless, her lips parted in shock. And yet she didn’t move, her sensible riding boots riveted to his aged carpet. His fingers reached for the fastenings of his shirt, only to remember that it still gaped open. Shrugging out of the garment, he threw it on the floor before beginning to loosen the waistband of his breeches.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off first one boot and then the next. Rowena watched in horrified fascination, her breathing having come to a halt sometime between when the first boot and the second hit the ground.

  “You have a choice,” he said finally, rising from the bed. “Either you depart now, front door or rear window, I couldn’t care less, or the breeches come off. And what happens subsequently”—he paused just long enough to see the darkening of her spectacular eyes—“should not come as a surprise to a woman as intelligent as you appear to be.”

 
She licked her bottom lip, pretending to ignore his outrageous threat. “So you refuse to help me? Why? When you helped those other women? When you have the expertise to discover who wishes to murder my sister and my aunt.” Her response was breathless with shock. “And to kill me.”

  Rushford shoved his hands into the pockets of his breeches. None of this could come to any good. “You have the wrong man,” he repeated. After a lifetime of risk and of loss, Rushford realized that he’d never really experienced this particular sense of dark unease. Not once. Not even for Kate, a small voice echoed. But he felt it now. For Rowena Woolcott. And worse, for himself.

  He leaned close, inhaling her scent, watching her tense, the porcelain of her skin pale with alarm and disbelief. He was so ready to touch her, taste her, all in a feeble attempt to lose himself in a physical maelstrom that could never hope to blot out the past. But he balanced this dangerous temptation by giving her one last chance to withdraw from him.

  He threw down the challenge like a gauntlet. “You do not wish to become my lover, do you?”

  “Your lover?” She mouthed the words, understanding frozen on her face, the pupils of her eyes dilating.

  He knew what it would be like. To run his hands from the silk of her cheeks to the slim column of her throat and downward over the planes and curves of her shoulders and waist, across her ribs and then up again to cup her breasts. To test himself, to torture the slight remnants, nay dregs, of his remaining conscience, he mentally traced her body through the layers of her clothing, deliberately leaving every button and fastening intact, watching the panic rise in her eyes like an oncoming storm.

  It was enough. He didn’t have to move or touch her because she had already started to pull away. His gaze still holding hers, he was aware of the tension building inside her, beneath her prim cloak and the plain lace at her slender throat.

  He knew the dangerous allure of the game he played. He wondered with a cool dispassion whether he really wanted Rowena Woolcott to flee, to disappear once more. Then again, the choice was not his to make. She already stood at the door limned in the dim light, a wraith picking up her narrow skirts, slipping away.

  Rushford simply watched her go.

  The echo of marble and stone was the only sound in the cavernous British Museum. The murmurings of crowds and respectful whispers of groups had long disappeared after the great museum closed its doors for another day, leaving behind hallways and rooms groaning with the treasures of the ancient and modern world.

  And as with all treasures, most came with a grievous price. The Rosetta Stone, almost four feet in height and one foot thick, rested in its glass sarcophagus, one thousand and seven hundred pounds of granite, in silent, erudite splendor. The ancient Egyptian artifact carved in the Ptolemaic era had provided three translations of a single passage, two in Egyptian scripts and one in the classical Greek of the country’s elite rulers.

  Two men stood in the shadows, contemplating the heavy stone with its hieroglyphic inscriptions, their expressions guarded. The taller of the two, barrel chested with hands clasped behind his back, pursed his lips with dissatisfaction.

  “It rankles, it surely does.” His statement hung in the cool air, as though everything depended on the next few moments.

  “What rankles precisely?”

  “That this discovery has been here on public display at the British Museum since 1802. For over forty years,” the barrel chested man murmured before adding as an afterthought, “Of course, there’s another reason our friend insists on the Stone’s return to France.”

  The man by his side raised a dark brow. His was a spare build, compact and athletic, his dark hair brushed back from a high forehead, his linen and demeanor impeccable. “I, for one, am not fooled,” he said with a courteous nod toward his companion. “He wants the Stone in his personal possession.” His English was faultless, save for the faintest trace of French accent. “Patriotic pride does not come into it. The fact that Napoleon’s scientists and scholars first discovered the Stone in 1799 makes little difference to him, Lowther.”

  Giles Lowther smiled thinly. “You, Sebastian, are mistaken. It makes all the difference to him—although not for the patriotic reasons you may believe.” The assertion floated into the night, illuminated only by two candelabra left behind by a watchman who had been duly rewarded. The two men took the time to consider their master’s motivations while affecting to read the inscriptions painted in white below the Stone: “Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801” on the left side and “Presented by King George III” on the right. Despite the curt description, the historical details were bloody. Both Lowther and Sebastian knew full well that after Napoleon returned from Egypt to France, his troops and scientists remained behind with their discovery, holding off British and Ottoman attacks for a further eighteen months. The French scholars swore they would prefer to burn their discoveries rather than turn them over to the hated enemy.

  “Our friend,” continued Sebastian, gesturing with an elegant motion to the artifact behind glass, “claims that the Stone was seized by the British from where it had been hidden in the back streets of Alexandria and then found its way to Britain aboard the captured French frigate HMS Egyptienne .”

  Lowther’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “All superfluous detail,” he said enigmatically. “What is more important is that he would like to continue the work Champollion began over two decades ago.” It was acknowledged that the orientalist Jean-Francois Champollion was credited as the principal translator of the Rosetta Stone.

  Sebastian sniffed his derision. “And what did we learn from the twenty paragraphs? In essence that the Stone speaks of a tax amnesty given to the temple priests of the day, restoring the tax privileges that they had traditionally enjoyed in more ancient times. Hardly the stuff of legend.” His voice trailed away as he glanced sharply at Lowther.

  Lowther smiled starkly. “Or so we are led to believe.”

  “There is more, then?”

  “Why else would our friend be so keen to have it in his possession?”

  Sebastian tapped a finger impatiently against the glass. His dark eyes were shadowed. “Therein lies the challenge. The situation may prove exceedingly untidy.”

  “Only because you failed the first time,” Lowther said, each word hard as diamonds.

  “What is past, is past.” He gave a Gallic shrug, “We move on.”

  “Indeed,” said Lowther, a hand at his chin, contemplating what seemed to be an imaginary army arrayed in front of him. “Our next moves must be more strategic. That being said, the actress’s demise was a necessity—a tactic—as she knew too much.”

  Sebastian nodded. “And of course the method of dispatch was meant to be a reminder.”

  “Our friend delights in symmetry after all.” Fire and water, thought Lowther.

  “Yet how can we be sure that the drowning will elicit Rushford’s interest?”

  “It will,” reassured Lowther. “Because he was besotted with the Duchess of Taunton. Her death, and his guilt, eat at his soul.”

  Guilt and passion, thought Sebastian to himself, a powerful, eternally useful combination of emotions. “The Duchess was lamentably unstable. That she flaunted their affair with no thought to propriety or her position—” He paused. “It was not expected.”

  They both stared at the huge tablet in silence, aware that they had only a few more moments before they must exit the museum. Then Lowther said, “Our friend demands results. A fortnight is all he is willing to give.”

  “Always impatient.” It was a careful observation. Neither man wished to elaborate further because the mention of their mutual friend, the impossibly reclusive and powerful Montagu Faron, always brought with it a measure of fear. And for good reason. Faron was never without his leather mask, shielding the world from the facial tremors that overtook him with unexpected ferocity. And yet, the man was seemingly indestructible, having escaped certain death by fire only one year earlier. And now with scars from
the flames all over his body, there were whispers that the great man of science and reason had made a pact with the devil.

  “Revenge drives him and his relentless timetable,” continued Lowther finally, giving Sebastian the smallest of frowns. “The business with the Woolcotts has never been resolved to his satisfaction, and therein lies the crux of the matter. That tiresome chit, Julia Woolcott, and her new husband, Strathmore, are responsible for more than they know. Good thing that they are far away in Africa, beyond reach for the moment. At least Rowena Woolcott’s death slaked some of his thirst for vengeance.”

  Sebastian’s eyes strayed back to the Stone. “I have heard it said that Faron’s childhood amour, Meredith Woolcott, was behind the tragedy that haunts him to this day. That she was responsible for destroying what many consider one of the world’s finest minds.” He turned to hold Lowther’s gaze, raising one eyebrow. “Although I wonder if that explanation is mere apocryphal legend.”

  Lowther, who perhaps knew Faron best, both the scientist and the legend, pretended to ignore the question. “We can speculate for hours on end, but for what purpose? I should recommend that we focus upon the matter at hand.” He gestured dramatically to the heavy stone behind the glass. “Returning the Rosetta Stone to its proper home.”

  “France,” intoned Sebastian.

  Lowther shook his head. “More specifically, Clair de Lune.” He referred to Faron’s vast estate outside Paris. “Do what you must. And rapidly.”

  “Don’t I always?” asked Sebastian, quick as a snake. He placed a hand on Lowther’s shoulder, aware that the familiarity made the other man recoil a little. Bon, he thought. No more discussion was required. The two men returned to stare at the silent and ancient Rosetta Stone, its import shimmering in the empty caverns of the British Museum.